In a speech at Pennsylvania State University, Mr. Obama promised new tax incentives, government investment and revamped regulations for energy efficiency. He also toured laboratories where researchers study ways to make buildings more energy efficient.

Drew Angerer/The New York TimesThe president called for new government investment to spur innovation.

The president’s remarks, delivered to several thousand students in the university gymnasium, echoed the theme of last month’s State of the Union address.

“These are places where the future will be won,” Mr. Obama said. “These are the places where the new jobs and the world’s best businesses will take root.”

The president spent much of last year promoting the benefits of investment in clean-energy technologies. On Thursday, Mr. Obama vowed that new government investment would spur American innovation.

That message is at the center of a philosophical clash with Republicans on Capitol Hill, who deride Mr. Obama’s use of the word “investment” as code for greater government spending in the face of growing federal deficits.

“For two years, American small businesses have been on the receiving end of this administration’s job-destroying mandates and costly new regulations,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. “Talking about innovation is nice, but removing Washington barriers to innovation is what job creators are really looking for right now.”

In State College, Mr. Obama repeated his call to freeze domestic spending for five years. But he defended the need for investments in what he called “clean energy, infrastructure and innovation.”

“Innovation has also flourished because we, as a nation, have invested in the success of these individual entrepreneurs,” the president said. “In America, innovation isn’t just how we change our lives. It’s how we make a living.”

Mr. Obama acknowledged that the tax credits he wants to provide would drain money from the Treasury. He received his largest applause when he reiterated his call for Congress to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies.

“They are doing just fine on their own,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s time to stop subsidizing yesterday’s energy. It’s time to start investing in the future. That’s what progress is.”

Among the proposals Mr. Obama is unveiling is a new tax credit for the renovation of commercial buildings that administration officials say could create a 10-fold increase in clean-energy retrofits of older buildings.

Before his remarks, Mr. Obama toured two laboratories where researchers are developing new, high-tech ways to save energy by using computers that can constantly adjust to make buildings more efficient.

“That means that they are helping to possibly design buildings that by huge measures are much more efficient than the ones that already exist,” Mr. Obama told reporters during the tour.

In his speech, Mr. Obama said Penn State was in the process of constructing a state-of-the-art research facility — an “energy-innovation hub,” the president said — in the Philadelphia Navy Yard to house clean-energy research.

“Making our buildings more energy efficient is one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest ways to combat pollution and create jobs right here in America,” he said. “And that’s what we’re going to do.”

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